Well the dog days of summer are here. I hate to wish my life away, but I’m ready for both cooler weather and NFL!
I am in the middle of Snow Angels a mystery set in Finland. I will reserve comments for when I complete it.
I am in the middle of *Bewitched & Betrayed (Raine Benares, Book 4) *and again I’ll reserve comments.
I’ve been burning through A Song of Ice and Fire. Started A Game of Thrones at the end of June and have now worked my way through to A Dance With Dragons, which I started reading yesterday. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for fans to wait five years between those last two books. Ugh.
Overall, I have enjoyed the series (obviously), but it may not have been the best thing to read all of the books straight through. Some of the writing has started to grate on me a bit (I now hate the word “jape”), but the plotting is keeping me hooked.
I’m currently reading Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. This is the second volume of Morris’ biography of Theodore Roosevelt. This volume covers the presidential years and I find it a bit less engaging than The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt since it deals more with policy and politics than with the man himself.
I rarely read fiction these days, but I decided to dig out an old classic that I read many years ago: Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
It’s just as funny as I remembered it being, a true classic of timeless humour.
And it’s way out of copyright and available in all formats for free at Project Gutenberg. I recommend getting one with the illustrations, they add another level of late-Victorian charm to the story.
Reading Richard Morgan’s Thirteen, but I’m really just biding my time until Murakami’s 19Q4 comes out this fall.
I have Dances With Dragons, but it may be quite a while before I get around to it. There was what, at the time, seemed like a huge delay between volumes 3 and 4 and I ended up re-reading the first three books. Now that Martin has shown us what a real delay looks like, I don’t know when I’ll get the time or energy to refresh my memory of the first four books and read the fifth.
Oh, and as for…
Thanks for reminding me of this! I’ve had it sitting on my Kindle for months now. I should definitely move it to the head of the queue.
Doncha just hate when people prematurely start threads???
You’re just *now *noticing?
Almost every Whatcha Reading thread since I started starting them has begun on the day before the first of the month.
Exceptions were when I was in the hospital three years ago and at least twice when senility kicked in and I forgot for a few days. (I now have it in Outlook to remind me.) Oh … and at least once I was flying to the UK and started it like 3 days early.
Finished The Devil All The Time this morning…what to say about this one? Well, it’s not for everyone. Harsh, gritty, just about too dark to bear. However, I think I liked it more than the short story collection.
Next up will be the new Dresden Files book.
I finished Tina Fey’s Bossypants and really enjoyed that her humor came through in written form. It reminded me of Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea but with an editor reeling in the outlandish parts to keep the comedy more earthlike.
In the middle of *What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus?: An Irreverent History of Christianity * which is enjoyable and a pretty quick read so far.
I abandoned Ian Rankin’s Resurrection Men and started R.J. Ellory’s A Simple Act of Violence. His A Quiet Belief in Angels knocked me on my ass, so I have high hopes for this one. His books are almost unobtainable in the U.S., so I was surprised to see this one at my library.
I read Markus Zusak’s I am the Messenger, not expecting it to be half as good as his The Book Thief. I was happily surprised to find that while it wasn’t as epic as The Book Thief, the writing, humor and characters were just as good.
I also spent an afternoon reading We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which struck me as a dark, inverted retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
Now I’m on to Catch Me If You Can, for a bit of light-hearted nonfiction.
A fourth of the way through Thomas Hardy’s final novel, Jude the Obscure. Very good so far.
Finally finished “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It took me a few months to finish that behemoth, but it was so worth it. A new favorite of all time.
Started “Soon I Will Be Invincible” by Austin Grossman and “The Evolution of Useful Things” by Henry Petroski.
I have been on the waitlist at my library for A Quiet Belief in Angels for over a year. Gah!
Just finished Countdown, a children’s novel from last year, taking place during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book is an interesting look at how a kid would experience life in the early 60s, and the format itself is neat, with photo collages of 60s news footage, song lyrics, pop culture images, and government propaganda.
Just started Among Others, a YA fantasy/fairy-type novel, we’ll see how this goes.
Currently reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Entertaining and educational. Pretty funny in parts, too, but never disrespectful of the dead.
Just finished a few post-apocalyptic books aimed at teens: The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials, both by James Dashner. Fast and light reads, can’t complain I suppose. The third book is due out in October; hope the final payoff is worth it.
Too obviously re-reading “One of our Thursdays is Missing”, which is the sixth book in the Thursday Next series by Fforde.
This is a bit of a change-up in terms of perspective, and also content really, when compared to the previous five books in the series.
I need a kindle or a fresh library card to discover more great authors! 
Welcome, JFfordeFan23! This thread is a great place to find suggestions. Also check out the “sticky” thread in this forum: the SDMB Book Recommendation Thread Compendium. It has links to lots of book discussions.
Finally finished Snow Angels a bleak and depressing crime drama set in the dark of Finland’s winter. The best I can say about it is that I’m glad I’m done with it. I won’t be reading any more from this author.
Finished the Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury. I had never read it and it is a classic. I would have liked it more if I had read it when I was the age of the target audience.
Finished the forth in Raine Benares series. It has become rather redundant. The author relies heavily on certain plot devices, like, if a character is told to go somewhere and stay put for their own good, you can count on that character somehow giving the guards the slip and going out and getting caught by the bad guys, causing Raine to have to somehow save the day. There is also a whole lot of someone telling her that she must go into hiding for her own good and a whole big discussion on how she won’t do that. It is getting rather tiresome. But I own the 5th in the series, so I’ll finish what I have. I may not continue to buy them though.